As the games got bigger, and the playoff wins mounted, Reading High's Trenity Burdine kept shrugging them off as if to say you haven't seen anything yet.

"We won this game," the Red Knights scoring star said more than once, "but if we lose the next game, what's that? It's just another team in history."

The Red Knights saw their season end Wednesday in a PIAA Class AAAA second-round game against Roman Catholic, but it was nothing to shrug off.

These Red Knights were more than just another team in history, even if they came up short of Burdine's ultimate goal - reaching the state final - or of a more realistic one - a spot in Saturday's state quarterfinals.

They made their mark with 28 victories and division, league and district championships.

They'll be remembered as one of the better teams in a long and distinguished basketball history at Reading.

A few weeks ago they were ranked as the No. 2 team of the decade in Berks, behind only Reading's 30-win team of two seasons ago.

They are one of just seven Reading teams to win as many as 28 games and one of just three in the last 18 years to win even a single state playoff game.

Last week's double-overtime loss to Roman Catholic doesn't diminish any of that, though it did spotlight some of this club's shortcomings. Actually, it pointed out all of them.

Burdine finished with 1,281 career points, eighth-best in Reading history, and carved out a reputation as a big-game player.

They started calling him "Big Shot" Burdine around the Geigle after the season-long series of big shots he hit: The game-winning 3 against Wilson Jan. 12; the two free throws in the final seconds to beat Coatesville in early December; the game-turning 3 late in the comeback over Central Catholic in the county semifinals; the momentum-shifting 3 from the corner with 1.1 seconds left in the third quarter in the District 3-AAAA title game over Hempfield.

With Burdine off his game in the 62-47 loss to Roman - missing open 3-pointers he usually knocks down, unable to get anything to fall around the basket during a painful 2-for-19 night from the field - the Knights weren't able to come up with another consistent scoring option in their halfcourt set. That was a concern from the early days of the season.

When they were causing havoc and controlling the game with their hellbent fullcourt pressure the Red Knights were in control of the action and got enough points off their defense to get by.

When they came up against a Roman team with a one-man press-breaker in whippet-like guard Rakeem Brookins they couldn't generate enough turnovers and quick points to win.

The Red Knights also left a lot of points on the board by missing 10-of-20 free throws - again, a problem that surfaced early in the season and never completely went away. One more free throw in regulation or the first overtime and you're reading about the outcome of Reading's first state quarterfinal since Donyell Marshall was a senior in 1991, not a season wrap-up.

The biggest shortcoming on this team was the same as with Marshall's: the lack of a second big-time college prospect to share the load with Burdine.

Look around at the other Quad-A teams still playing, and they've each got two, three or more top college prospects; you can't expect to win at the highest levels without that kind of depth of talent.

That being said, this Reading team did the most with what it had.

Second-year coach Tim Redding came into the season with a better idea of what he wanted to do and the kind of people he wanted on his team - and made it work.

Look at the final resume: 11 victories over teams that won 20 or more games - York High, Coatesville, Simon Gratz, Wilson (three times), Central Catholic, Daniel Boone (twice), Hempfield and Hazelton.

The Red Knights continued to improve throughout, and by the end of the season Reading had a formidable and exciting team, one that played together and played hard all the time.